Monday, June 9, 2014

The Idea of Development - Western Perspective v/s Indian Perspective

On Sunday 8 June 2014, Narendra Modi said something to the effect - so far the development work done in the country was with a western perspective, and now he would like to work with an Indian perspective.

He was speaking on the occasion of the launch of the book - Getting India Back on track – An Action Agenda for Reform, and as always, he spoke with great conviction and displayed a very clear vision about the ideas are churning in his mind.

Amongst many of the thinks he said, this one particular line that caught my attention.

And I strongly believe this is the crux of the problem with the Indian development model. 

Most of the development policies of this country, especially, those formed during the last Congress-led regimes have been made by people who had studied the economics related topics from institutes in foreign countries.

It would be safe to assume that during the overseas education, these leaders learnt the benchmarks and scales that have been refined to measure the economic progress of those countries. When referring to  India, these very benchmarks and scales where applied to the Indian scenario without giving adequate consideration to the local variables or conditions.

So naturally when the issues raised were based on alien parameters the solutions were also bound to be based on those very perspectives and hence were not designed to suit or solve our problems as we see them. Though the country may appear to have progressed in financial numbers one notices that the masses are generally not happy with the so-called progress.

Narendra Modi spoke of this in one statement during his speech, I feel he must have thought about this a lot more.



Narendra Modi is a good orator with a great vision for where he would like to take this country in the next decade. I only hope and wish him the best so that his ideas and words are converted into actions and results.

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